Gestalt Academy of Secrets Table 2 (Inactive)

Game Master drbuzzard

Tamm moves up to the portal and examines the hallway and door across from us for traps.

perception: 1d20 + 22 ⇒ (14) + 22 = 36

"Check across from us and then work our way down the hallway?" he suggests to the group.

No traps detected on the door. Hallway looks empty.

"Whatever killed the other contestant doesn't seem to be around."
By the way, did we check the body? Found anything?
Raphael will look for a piece of cloth and try to shroud the body, making another prayer.
"We must assure he gets a proper burial after we have win this... contest. And pray no one else die."
"Sounds a good idea Mr. Tamm. Let Mu'aqquibat the Protector to open it."
He asks, mentally, for his Eidolon to open the door.

Some people did search the body and found nothing.

The Eidolon opens the door directly to the south.

This room resembles an academic’s office, albeit the office of
a very messy professor. Tattered books and broken furniture
lie strewn across the floor. Some long-congealed dark liquid
pools on the floor beneath a solid cascade of the same
substance along the south wall, and what appear to be bone
spurs protrude from the dark wooden wall surrounding an iron
door on the opposite end of the small chamber. Bones from
dozens of creatures rest in neat piles on the bookshelves,
with the skull from each sitting atop its stack, staring into the
room with vacant, hollow eyes.

"It looks like something bad happened here too ... that seems to be the theme for this place." Tamm says when the room is revealed.

He scans the room for traps.

perception: 1d20 + 22 ⇒ (3) + 22 = 25

and if he sees nothing he enters to examine the collection of bones.

"Might be some clue to this place amongst this rubble..." he says, shifting a couple of old books with the toe of his boot.

No traps in here as far as you can tell.

Raphael examines the bones.
Heal Check: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (18) + 10 = 28
Raphael Perception check: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (10) + 15 = 25
Mu'aqquibat The Protector Perception check: 1d20 + 13 ⇒ (16) + 13 = 29

Under the bones you find plaques with names and short descriptions of the named written in some rather odd poetry.

One of the sets of bones has an inscription wrapping around one of the thigh bones “This is no Hall of Wards but a Hell of Magic. The Breaching is a sham. Flee, if you can, before the whispers drive you mad.”

In a small crack in the back of one of the shelves you find a scroll hidden.

Raphael shows the inscription to the others.
"I guess that resolves the price distribution issue. This is no Festival, it is a human sacrifice. We must reach the other contestants, and together we must escape this place."
He tries to identify the scroll.
Spellcraft Check: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (4) + 10 = 14

It does seem to be a scroll. You are pretty sure of that.

"I am unable to identify this scroll, can anyone try?"
He extends the scroll to the others.

Lucian ignores the scroll, letting the magic types deal with it. He does his own scan for traps.

Perception: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (13) + 16 = 29 +6 vs traps

"Are these bones the remains of other contestants, or is this someone's fossil collection? Tamm asks no one in particular.

To Raphael "My talents lie in other directions than reading scrolls ... maybe Laurel can help."

He searches the rubble on the floor for anything interesting.

perception: 1d20 + 19 ⇒ (5) + 19 = 24

Knowledge local if you want to try to recognize some of the names.

Mu'aqquibat The Protector large form kneels and prays before the assembled bone piles.

Acererak rises up.

(just kidding)

Knowledge (local): 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (7) + 16 = 23

You recognize the names of a few past competitors you've heard talk of.

Tamm looks to Raphael "It looks more and more like you're right about this "test" being nothing more than an elaborate trap."

He examines the door surrounded by the odd bone spurs and listens at it to see if he can hear anything.

perception: 1d20 + 19 ⇒ (20) + 19 = 39

Doesn't seem to be trapped, and you hear nothing.

Raphael nods at Sazzat.
"I pray the goddess we prevail."

wait for Laurel to try identifying the scroll before moving on?

Gee whiz. I go to work (ok it was a 10.5 hour stint) after posting this morning and there's 32 posts. :) Just fair warning, there is no way for me to post that often.

Laurel looks around the room with his enhanced vision. "Whoa. I'm guessing the guy back there will end up here soon. This isn't good."

Upon hearing Raphael hearing he found a scroll Laurel's mood picks up a bit, "I'll be happy to take a look at that."

He then takes a few seconds to cast read magic, and examines the scroll.

Perception: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (15) + 15 = 30
Kn: Local: 1d20 + 18 ⇒ (5) + 18 = 23
Kn: Arcana: 1d20 + 24 ⇒ (2) + 24 = 26
Spellcraft: 1d20 + 24 ⇒ (1) + 24 = 25

It is a scroll of banishment.

Don't worry, I won't run any combats if people are not available.

me too :)

Darryl pockets the vial with his name on it, intent on keeping it safe.

At the mention of the note, he looks it over.
"Apparently the ravings of a mad man. Truly, what would lead you to believe its veracity?"

I can't post that frequently every day, but it's fun when I can

"Banishment sounds like good backup for Raphael to have. He did a number on that spider yesterday."

"I say we have the eidolon open the next door, It doesn't appear to be trapped and I can't hear anything behind it."

"I agree he did well with the spider yesterday, however I think it would be best for me to hold onto this until he can decipher it. I have already and can use it immediately, if necessary."

If no one has a dissenting opinion, Laurel will put it away after pausing for a few seconds.

Raphael nods at Laurel.
"I feel safer knowing you have it, and can use it in an emergency."

Mu'aqquibat The Protector opens the next door, after everyone is in position.

No, actually the eidolon fiddles with the door, but it doesn't budge.

Sazzat tries to unlock it, but merely figures out it just doesn't open.

"It seems like this place is only partially finished with these doors to nowhere." Tamm remarks.

"Let's go back out and check the next door leading south."

moved my token on the map

I'll check that door for traps.

perception: 1d20 + 19 + 3 ⇒ (3) + 19 + 3 = 25

If it seems clean, and like a real door, he'll suggest the eidolon try this door

"This place may be one big trap with no way out. We need to be careful. We don't want to end up like the victims in the last 150 attempts at this."

There appears to be no traps on the next door.

"Mu'aqquibat, if you would do the honors ...." he says to the angelic eidolon.

Mu'aqquibat The Protector looks at Sazzat, with an intrigued look in her eyes.

Raphael goes to Mu'aqquibat The Protector.
"Even if he has fiendish blood in him, Sazzat has managed to rise above it, and become a force of good. Please do as he says, as he is our trusted ally."
Mu'aqquibat The Protector nods, looks at Sazzat, smiling, and flies to move the next door.

The door opens easily enough.

This room is dark, moist, and rank with the smell of sweat, mildew, and iron. Desks sit in even, tiered rows facing the southern end of the room, where thick metal chains hang from the slate-covered wall. Tethered in those chains is one of the other contestants, the rogue who was there at the starting this morning.

"Oh thank the gods you are here! Please free me! I can't take this place any longer!"

Raphael quickly moves to help the thief.
"Praise Sarenrae you are alive! Are you hurt?"
What is needed to free her?

She looks bruised and battered, but you see no major injuries.

"I'm not too bad off, I just need to get out of here! Just get me out of these chains!"

Disable device or break (or if someone has an adamantine weapon to just sunder the chains).

"Thanks for the vote of confidence Raphael." Tamm says when the Aasimar vouches for him to the eidolon.

"Slow down!" he cautions Raphael as he rushes in to aid the rival contestant. "Let's make sure of things before you go rushing into what could be a trap."

He follows the aasimar into the room and examines the rogues bindings.

"I can get her loose, but could someone do something magicky to verify she is who she looks like? This whole day is turning out to be one big trap and I'd just like to be careful."

(just noticed that this was my 1000th post)

Congratulations!
Raphael detects magic on the thief.

The thief is wearing some magical gear, but does not appear to be under the influence of any spells.

"She doesn't seem to be under any spell. But we can't leave her here anyway. We have to release her."

Darryl watches with a bemused expression.
Really, how has he managed to live this long? He is entirely too trusting for his own good. He thinks to himself as he watches Raphael throw caution to the wind and immediately attempt to free the girl.
Well at least Sazzat has a proper sense of caution.

"Chained up with all of her gear, that's weird." he thinks to himself.

To the rogue he says "Our group discussed earlier the possibility of joining forces with other competitors during the trial. I'll set you free from these chains on two conditions, first you must agree to join with us in completing the trial and escaping this trap as an equal partner, and second, you must truthfully tell us what you know of this trial, recount your experiences so far, tell us how the wizard died and how you came to be chained up here."

He pauses for a moment

"Understand that we have ways of verifying your truthfulness and that we take agreements like I propose very seriously. If you turn coat on us there will be serious consequences."

the lawful-neutral, deal making, merchant side of Sazzat Tamm coming to the surface.

If she agrees, Tamm sets to work trying to free the rogue.

Disable Device: 1d20 + 25 ⇒ (19) + 25 = 44

"You have to free me! I can't take it in here any more! I'd do anything you say!" and she breaks down sobbing.

Raphael sees how trustworthy she is.
Sense Motive: 1d20 + 15 ⇒ (17) + 15 = 32

That didn't sound like an agreement to Tamm, so he reiterates.

"I understand your distress, but let's be clear. Will you agree to join with us in escaping this place?"

aside to the others, "Do you think it's the red skin, horns, and tail that are weirding her out? I get that sometimes."

Raphael believes her to be telling the truth. Then again, he believes the best of everyone.

"Yes, I just want to get out of here. I'll do what you say!"

Then we'll spring her and see what she has to say.

Table 2 discussion

dotting

Thank you for the invite. So I guess we don't know each other?

You can decide if you happen to be acquainted with any particular individual. By this point in your careers you are likely of large enough reputation that even if you don't know each other, you know of each other.

If it is ok with the others, I would vote for they to have know each other personally, and have some level of trust between them, just to make things flow smoother...
About Raphael they would know he is a very pious man, a dedicated follower of Sarenrae, and somewhat a fatalist (he thinks all things happen for a reason, that gods guide events and actions of everything and everyone). But he is not a preacher, not a bigot, and in fact a very charming guy.

Sazzat Tamm is very rules oriented, the definition of a lawful neutral merchant. He is a member of an interplanar arms dealing organiziation called the Brazen Claw Consortium based in the City of Brass.

He believes in making, keeping, and enforcing deals of all kinds.

He has been visiting Golarion looking for business opportunities that will advance him in his organization.

That would make sense for them to have meet. He went to Qadira to trade, and Raphael was part of the local group that receive him.

Do you tell players the AC's of the monsters they're fighting so that they know whether to roll damage / effects after their attacks?

No. I also don't show the bonuses of the monsters for saves or to hit.

I respond quite often, so don't worry about it going slow.

Do you want us to roll damage for each swing?

Fair warning, i expect my character's full attack to be a wall of text.

Yes, roll damage for each swing.

I can read a wall of text, it won't kill me.

It would be a good idea for everyone to emulate Sazzat, Raphael, or Laurels's profile so I have the ability to see their stats quickly in their posts.

This can be done when you edit the profile by putting it into one of the first three fields.

I'd like HP, AC, FF AC, Touch AC, CMD, Perception, Init bonus, and saves.

I need to clean up my character sheet as well, it's on my to do list for this weekend.

The raw stat block is a little hard to follow.

"Yes, surely a more thorough examination could be had before such an irrevocable decision?" Darryl adds in hope of helping Sazzat's plea.

Diplomacy (aid?): 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (8) + 2 = 10

maybe better in gameplay?

oops :)

Did we heal up Lucian after the spider szorched him? If not, we should take care of that.

Yes, the academy would have covered it if you didn't. Either way you start in top shape.

Grrrr, Paizo boards weren't giving me updates on this campaign. I'll be catching up, sorry everybody.

Question: Mu'aqquibat The Protector's Damage Reduction 9/Evil applies?
She got only one hit, for 15 damage, right?

Yes, the DR applies. Also, yes, I got lucky once.

Question: Are they still invisible? Not sure if we're dealing with regular or greater invisibility. Also, if they aren't anymore, what do the creatures look like and can we make any knowledge checks about them?

They are all invisible except the ones which were hit with glitterdust (indicated by the gold colored numbers). They are humanoid in appearance, and I believe Laurel did do a knowledge planes to identify them. You can give it a shot as well as he didn't turn up much information

Thank you. I'll get a post in momentarily.

Did we learn enough about them with knowledge:planes so that we can skip rolling dice for sneak attacks vs elementals?

Hmm, I guess technically you did since they are of the elemental subtype.

Lucian did enough static, non sneak damage to kill his anyway.

Ah, then subtract the 11 points from mine as well if they are immune to precision damage. I will edit my damage now.

yeah, invisible critters that are immune to criticals, precision, and sneak attacks are pretty much my kryptonite.

I just had surgery. Nothing life threatening, but I'm going to be in a lot of pain and on a lot of drugs the next week. Please DMPC as necessary.

Will do. Get better. Had shoulder surgery early in the summer myself. That does take it out of you.

So you know, the other table just imploded yesterday. I will likely invite over one player from that table over here so he can continue playing. This would be the only player from there who didn't make a hobby of arguing with the GM.

I admit I can be brusque at times as GM, and I do try to keep players in check. However arguing with the GM when nothing is going wrong to you is something which drives me up the wall, be it as player or GM.

I tend to have a policy when playing of assuming the GM isn't going to twist the rules to screw me, and is just trying to run a fair and somewhat balanced game. I give them some rope, proffer a bit of trust. It tends to work out better than constant bickering. Yes, I often see GMs screw up rules, but I don't much care as it usually balances out both for and against the party.

I won't claim I know every rule. There are simply too many for anyone to do that (short of someone with no other things they focus on at all). I do try to be fair in my interpretations of them, and I am willing to listen to people when I'm wrong. I do, however, not generally allow extra slack on things because players of some types will scrabble for every iota of power, no matter if they have never been scratched or failed a save so far in the game.

My goal here is to try to challenge you and keep it fun. So far I don't know that it has been all that challenging, but I'll see how it proceeds. I can always adjust. I would ask you to indulge me in assuming I don't deliberately cheat nor do I have animus for the players (I was accused of both by the first rage quitter over there).

This is my rule for debating the rules. "If you think the GM has made a mistake and it's significant enough to be concerned about, bring up your point calmly and reasonably. Once. Then move on." I've had a few GMs give me, in my opinion, some unreasonable rulings, but it's their game and I'm not going to argue beyond what I specified above.

Yes I have the same basic assumption that the GM by default is not here to screw over the players. Rule 0 may be that the GM is always right, but rule -1 is that there is no game without players.

Yes, a GM can't be a tyrant if they still want a game.

Hahaha I just read through what happened. Basically it was one of those situations where RAW is wonky (since beastshaped octopus's can breath air due to the very restricted parameters of the ability). But I won't comment on it, best to let it die.

Yes, I never should have argued in the first place. No good could have come out, but the guy accusing me of cheating and whatnot which got under my skin. Heck, in the very first combat with that table they were looking up monster stats and accusing me of cheating.

The more the merrier in our group.

I agree that the challenges aren't very hard so far (but we've only had 3 fights), but that has as much to do with action economy as anything else.

We've got 5 people plus a critter acting on our side and it will take a really powerful single enemy to counter us. (referencing the squid lady and bebilith fights in particular)

The trouble with the single powerful enemy is that there's a danger that they end up too tough for the players to hurt. More bad guys is probably the answer.

If you're going to port over one of table one's players and we end up with 6 + an angel, then we'll need more bad guys.

I do have to adjust the combats since they've been snooze fests so far. I'll be dropping in more flunkies.

I'd double the guys in the next room, just to see what happens.

I also expected the squid lady to run, heal up, and come back.

Powerful outsiders should be cowardly and half the trouble in killing them should be keeping them from escaping.

Of course, we're not packing much in the way of dimensional anchor spells right now, so that could get pretty old chasing down an "at will" teleporter, both from the player and gm side.

Suppose I could do that, but it will mess with your recon.

I will say the simple mythic templates really don't seem to impress. I certainly get the idea why people describe Wrath of the Righteous as a walkthrough.

Yes, I never should have argued in the first place. No good could have come out, but the guy accusing me of cheating and whatnot which got under my skin. Heck, in the very first combat with that table they were looking up monster stats and accusing me of cheating.

Oh that really grinds my gears. Both of those. I've had to tell one of my local players unless be stops googling all his enemies I'm going to make knowledge checks absolutely brutal and not even give them enough to get a name.

retcon the post about 1 demon and 1 ribcage to 2 demons and 2 ribcages.

I don't think anyone will mind.

My character is built to kill an unprepared CR appropriate evil outsider in 1 round 6 times a day. And be pretty decent the rest of the day. Nobody else seems to be a slouch either.

I'd say that either they all need to have dual initiative (which still leaves them open to being debuffed and losing both actions instead of just one action) or there needs to be more of them.

As a DM, I've always found that increasing the numbers is the easiest way to balance things. Instead of an ancient red dragon, I'll do an old one with a couple fire giants. Stuff like that.

In my home campaign of Serpent Skull I would generally double them and buff them, but we also had a party of 7.

Of course I also did some fairly sick things like a large group of freebooter archers. Those were rather nasty.

We're already 1 person above the average party size of 4.

If you're going to add another player I'd double the numbers and add mythic templates to see how we do.

It occurs to me that dual initiative on high power outsiders that can teleport at will could be really annoying.

I've never been a fan of double initiative. It seems incredibly abusable to me.

Only thing I have using double initiative was the invisible stalkers, and to be blunt, they were creampuffs.

Irritating but harmless.

I don't think that dual initiative is all that bad.

Going twice 20 counts/steps apart could be nasty for a critter that could teleport and cast spells at will, but if they're just swinging twice then it's not a big deal.

The best the stalkers could have done is move action to close and attack once on their first count and then attack and move action away on their second count, making it hard for us to pin them down.

They couldn't hit us in any case, so it just would have prolonged the fight, not changed the outcome.

Are you thinking of adding in the other player now? You could retcon the wizard we just rescued into someone else.

And me worrying about the other table being "ahead" of us. :P
If I were you I would say the new guy is a contestant that arrived "late", and is catching up with us. About retconning the reconnoissance, go for it, no problem.
About arguing, so far your ruling are hard, but fair. And I get the clear impression you handle the rules better than me.

I'm good with whatever you decide. :)

I have asked the other player if he wanted to play in the other group. I have not heard back. He usually posts later in the day so there is no telling if he is game or not yet.

Also, I was of a like mind about him being a late contestant.